Conversation

Beginning to think of critics the same way I think of actors. Just because you play a pilot in a movie doesn’t mean you can fly a plane. Critical discourses are like movies about a thing. They rest on a detailed correspondence between 2 worlds that can lead you to confuse them.
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When advocates for a cause try to get an organization to run in ways that serves that cause, it feels like Tom Cruise trying to influence fighter pilots how to fly on the strength of acting in Top Gun. Acting is not flying.
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To the extent he could demand coherent actionable things at all, they’d make the flying more cinematic and create more gripping footage perhaps. He might say “do slower barrel rolls” and that would parse and be actionable but not necessarily meaningful for combat flying.
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The thing is, Tom Cruise is unlikely to be confused about this. He’s likely to be aware that at best he’s telling pilots how to fly more cinematically, not more effectively. You and I get immersed in movie worlds. People making movies get immersed in movie-making worlds.
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You and I might forget it’s a movie and say things like “Maverick should have punched Iceman when he said that.” That’s in-world thinking. Tom Cruise might say things like “we should have camera 3 over there for thus shot.” That’s backstage world thinking.
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What makes naive critics so hard to deal with is that many of them literally don’t seem to realize that the skills deployed in a critical discourse are basically unrelated to the ones being deployed in the thing being criticized. They are kinda in their own movie.
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There’s a thought I’m trying to work out because increasingly in consulting work, supporting execs dealing with not-even-wrong demands of activist parties is turning into part of the job. Especially because I usually agree with the critics in terms of larger objectives.
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Critic: Acme corp needs to be net zero CEO: Umm Me: They’re right you know CEO: Where do we start? Me: Well, maybe carbon footprint? Critic: Use camera 3! CEO: Uhh… wut? Critic: And wear an organic cotton suit! CEO: Consultant, help me! Me: Uhh, can you prepay my invoice?
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There’s a reason actors often turn into politicians. It’s one of the rare domains where their skills translate. It’s the same reason critics can also move into politics. Stand-up comics are critic-actors. Also good fit fit politics. And lawyers.
Replying to
All these theater professions that create and work within high-fidelity simulations of worlds they point to are kinda vaguely interoperable. The simulations serve very different purposes than the worlds simulated. But it’s easy to lose sight of the fact.
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Just venting. Running into theater people in too many directions. That’s the reason why you get so many theaters — greenwashing theater, wokewashing theater… if theater is the only language you speak and only model you understand, it’s the only way to accommodate your demands.
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I don’t actually mind unreasonable or self-serving or even openly grifty demands. They are at least rational and negotiable. Theatrical demands otoh are not unreasonable, they’re complete non sequiturs. When theater people run plastics discourse you get plastic straws theater.
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